Aboriginal Justice Strategy, Summative Evaluation

1. Introduction


1. Introduction

In 1991, just as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was undertaking its work, the federal government launched the Aboriginal Justice Initiative, which supported a range of community-based justice initiatives such as diversion programs, community participation in the sentencing of offenders, and mediation and arbitration mechanisms for civil disputes. Five years later (in 1996), partly in response to the Commission's reports and recommendations, the federal government renewed and expanded the Aboriginal Justice Initiative, which then became the Aboriginal Justice Strategy (AJS). In 2002, the federal government renewed the AJS for a further five years, covering the period from 2002-03 to 2006-07. The Department of Justice conducted a summative evaluation of the current AJS funding and this document constitutes the evaluation's final report.

1.1. Context of the evaluation

This evaluation fulfills a departmental commitment to conduct the AJS summative evaluation during the 2006-07 fiscal year. In its Results-Based Management and Accountability Framework (RMAF), prepared in support of the current AJS funding allocation, the Department of Justice committed to conducting a formative and a summative evaluation of AJS.[1] The Department completed the AJS formative evaluation in 2005.[2]

1.2. Objectives of the evaluation

The core objective of this evaluation is to review AJS activities that were funded between 2002-03 and 2006-07 and assess their impacts. As a summative evaluation, this study focuses on the program's rationale, results, and cost-effectiveness, but also covers a number of issues relating to program implementation. Appendix A lists all the evaluation issues and questions that this evaluation is covering.

This evaluation is also required to meet Treasury Board requirements, as the AJS is scheduled to sunset in March 2007.

1.3. Structure of the report

This report contains five sections, including the introduction. Section 2 describes the AJS, while Section 3 describes the methodology for the evaluation; Section 4 summarizes the key findings per program component; and Section 5 presents the conclusions and lessons learned.